Bonneville

I watched the latest film about Steve Jobs the other week. Directed by Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame, it was unfortunately a fairly average flick. Despite this, it did have a few memorable moments. The one that sticks in my head is the scene where Jobs is asked what he actually does by Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak. “I play the orchestra,” he somewhat pretentiously exclaims. The idea is a simply one. Some of us are good at playing an instrument, but unless someone is taking care of the whole she-bang, all you end up with is a big cacophony. And while it might be a bit of a stretch to compare today’s builder to Jobs, it’s clear he approached building the Bonneville you see here in the same way. Some creators use their hands, while others use their head. Poland’s Wojtek Borecki is clearly all about the latter.

Steak and chips. That’d be my death row meal, I think. And a bottle of really good Aussie red. Yes, I have thought about it before. Now it wouldn’t just be any old piece of meat and spuds. No way. It’d be something special. One of those melt in your mouth steaks that’s so tender, it almost cuts itself. That’s the thing about good steak; it’s so simple, yet so delicious. And awesomely unpretentious, too. Which brings us to tonight’s bike. It too is a perfect slice of meaty goodness, with nothing more than the bare essentials to make it perfectly delicious. It’s a killer black-on-black Triumph Bonnie and also it’s the latest build from Cognito Moto, so why don’t you tuck in?

There are literally millions of two-wheeled machines on the streets of Thailand, with the market dominated by a huge variety of scooters and low capacity commuter bikes. With 15 million people living in the Greater Bangkok area it makes for the perfect form of transport, if not more than a little dangerous for the uninitiated foreigner. But where the streets of LA and London have been home to vintage-tyred, old school styled Cafe Racers for decades, in Thailand it’s not just a case of what’s old is new again, it’s simply never been seen before. For the huge motorcycle megastore K-Speed, with branches across the country, custom bikes play a crucial role in their daily fun and promotion. But for founder of the brand Eak they are a way of life, a passion and on this build his chance to deliver to the Thai streets the rare sight of old school cool; it’s a 2015 Triumph Bonneville with his trademark sinister spin.

There’s a famous saying in Spain that goes something like this. ‘De una boda sale otra boda.’ Despite our initial guesses about it having something to do with selling your body, it turns out it literally means “from one wedding comes another wedding.” As you can imagine, we were a little confused when Spain’s Tamarit used it in reference to their new bike build. As we started to express our support for what we assumed was Spain’s progressive new human/bike marriage laws, they explained that the first ‘wedding’ was the party to reveal their ‘Superstar’ build, featured a few short months ago on these very pages. Happy to see the bike complete but keen to move on, fate and serendipity conspired to bring them their next wedding and/or customer at the very same event. With their best suits on and a spring in their step, here’s Spain’s Tamarit Motorcycles with their latest build – a 2006 Triumph Bonneville named ‘Pantera’, or as we say in English, ‘The Pather’.

For a century now limited production run motorcycles have been a mainstay of the industry, from companies like Bimota and Confederate who use the engines of major manufacturers to power their beasts to the Harris and Rickman Brothers who made their own frames. It has always been about offering something that little bit special, Honda had Colin Seeley make them a batch of race replica CB750’s while Ronin picked up a bunch of unwanted Buell’s for their unique creations. But for Jose and Tito from Spain’s Macco Motors it all came about in a very unexpected way, rather than create a “special” they’ve simply had customer after customer want them to take a modern Triumph Bonneville and build it the Macco way. Each one comes with a little something different but all are built with factory level quality and a brilliant finish, their latest is a 2008 example known simply as The Trickster.

Great artists are always challenging themselves, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and creating new pieces that require them to go to a place they’ve never been before. When you live in the incredible city of Elche, Spain, with its beautiful historic town centre, Baroque splendour and you spend your days churning out some of the best custom motorcycles in the country, it would be easy to rest on your laurels. But not the team at Tamarit Motorcycles. Specialists in turning modern Triumphs into cafe racers and scramblers for their backlog of clients, they decided to set themselves a challenge. Throw off the shackles of a customer’s requirements, liberate themselves from their previous styling and time constraints and see what would emerge. It all started with a simple Google search and the end result is this stunning Dirt Tracker for the streets, a 2010 Triumph Bonneville known as “Superstar”.

Blood, sweat and tears; it’s what most of us pour into our personal bikes. It never ceases to amaze us how a professional builder can turn out some of the most amazing work for customers, seemingly without blinking an eye, and then almost kill themselves by simply trying to build a bike that’s designed to impress no one but themselves. And as it just so happens, blood, sweat and tears are just the ticket for bullfighting, too. Keeping in mind the parallels, here’s a bike to finish off a pretty courageous week of custom builds here on la Casa deTuberías Quemadas. Meet Analog Motorcycles and their ‘El Matador 2.0.’

When you grow up in a city of historical beauty – the setting of a Shakespeare play and where Galileo lectured at the local university – that also happens to be one of the oldest in the world, richness of culture and a passion for creation are in your blood from birth. For brothers Diego and Riki Coppiello, it was the internal combustion engine that become their passion at a very young age. However when they reached university, art and physics became their courses of choice. But the call of the engine brought them back together and they founded North East Custom in Padova, Italy where they combine all their talents to create motorcycles like this 2007 Triumph Bonneville that focus on clean design and highlighting the beauty in mechanical simplicity.

Tradition, it would seem, is a double-edged sword. While some Japanese bike brands would salivate at the thought of having a model in their line-up whose roots went back more than a few years, the likes of Triumph, Harley Davidson and Norton are in the challenging position of marching headlong in the 21st Century with baggage tagged ‘please return to 1900’. For these brands, a big new model design requires a deft hand to strike just the right balance between influences spanning more than 100 years and the always-fickle ‘modern consumer’. The perfect balance is a bike that will appeal equally to almost any age group. The latest salvo in this old-meets-new battle comes to us from Triumph’s 2016 Hinckley headquarters via a greasy British motorway cafe from 1959. It’s their new take on what has to be one of the world’s best-know motorcycles. So now, after their biggest-ever bike launch, how does the new model stack up and should you really spend your hard-earned shekels on one?

For 2016, the Triumph Bonneville has finally shed its air-cooled status and embraced a raft of new technologies that brings the engine of the retro-styled machine truly into the 21st century. It’s a brilliant machine that will no doubt sell like hot cakes, but with such a change there is also a chance for a new bike to become a modern classic. That very well could be steeds like this “new” 2004 Triumph Bonneville. With no electronic aids, no fly by wire and carbies for induction it is perhaps the true bridge between the old classics and the new retro-tech masterpieces. Either way, Macco Motors in Spain sure know how to turn out a brilliant Bonnie of any vintage and this little lady known as ‘Wayra’ sure likes her hair in the wind.